THE PRE-ADAMIC WORLD
(Summary of various sermons given by Dr Hoeh in 1977/78)
We have taught that angels were on earth before Adam, being trained. What was their
primary function? To rule trees and rocks and streams? What were they given experience
in? More than merely ruling over each other. We should expand our former concepts and
see that they were on earth to govern in a small way (as an opportunity to learn and to
prove they could be trusted) before being sent out further into the universe. Their role on
earth should be seen as equiping or qualifying them to rule in the universe. This means
they were governing nature in great detail.
As God Himself is concerned for even a sparrow that falls, so God is concerned for the
balance of nature. If God knows the hairs of our head, He is concerned over the intimate
aspects of life of every creature. If He rules through angels, then they also would be
likewise concerned with the minute aspects of nature. This is what they were asked to
govern--not a barren world, but a world full of life forms throughout geologic history. The
Church has a responsibility to teach the role of angels in the world before Adam....
We do not see a world of which we could say that God was ‘experimenting’--that term has
overtones that could be misunderstood. I would prefer the concept that God was
‘deveIoping’ a creation in which angels were being challenged and tested on how they
would carry out God's government in guiding that nature, and in ruling over ever more
complex forms of life...
The world that we see in the future though the eyes of the prophet Isaiah--the world in
which a child can play on the hole of a poisonous snake without being poisoned because it
is no longer poisonous, that the lamb and the leopard and the bear and the ox and the lion
and the little child shall all be together--and they are not devouring one another. Now you
all know how the Millennium has been pictured--the whole of nature will be subject to the
government of God. Now this may sound very strange to our ears until it has taken root.
The whole of nature is to be subject to the government of God, and instead of one creature
devouring another for survival, we are going to have an entirely different system of nutrition
and a different system of birthing because the two are interrelated.
The world today from nature is not a reflection of the kind of government God intended to
be exercised by the angels throughout nature. It is in fact a reflection of the Devil's idea of
competition, of devouring, and keeping in balance by each thing competing with something
else. Now Mr Armstrong long ago conceived of the idea of competition as being the
lifeblood both of our economy and business and society and government. He said this is,
as far as he is concerned, the fundamental characteristic of the Devil's philosophy,
whatever each individual may have been personally taught....
The angels had knowledge and could see the picture clearly as far as what they were going
to do and who they were going to listen to. As God started out He said 'I want to make sure
the creation reflects the spirit of love, and it's going to be a beautiful world. We are not
going to have competition. Therefore the pattern of nutrition and the pattern of birth will not
need to have competition to keep ever thing in that order we see it in.’ Can you imagine a
World Tomorrow in which mice reproduce at the present rate with no cats to catch the
mouse? I just have to question. What would happen in Africa if we took away competition
and left the birth rate the same? We see the whole of nature is going to change, both in
terms of terms of what an animal eats and in terms of the reproductive systens, because
they are all tied together...
1
You can look at the whole of geology, and you will not find a single period, geologically
speaking, that corresponds to a nature such as will be in the Millennium. It is all a nature
such as we have it today--creatures were devouring in the Tertiary, they were devouring in
the Cretaceous, they were devouring in the Mesozoic, they were devouring in the
Archaeozoic and the Plaeozoic. And for all we know, in the earliest forms we can probably
assume the same thing.
There is this competition because it goes hand in hand with the statement Jesus made that
the Devil was a murderer from the beginning. That is, the spirit of competition such as we
viewed it reflected itself in the spirit of murder... And indeed murder--the spirit of it--is the
consequence of the philosophy of competition. And he said ‘I'll work to take the patterns
that God has given and instead of exercising God's government I am going to design it in
such a way that nature is in balance by competition, by devouring, by strife--the way of the
survival of the fittest--the swiftest mouse getting away most of the time, the slowest cat
doesn't survive.’
Now I think when we see that we will have a whole new view - that when we talk about the
Devil's government we can in fact extend the Biblical account and we have looked at nature
and we have to conclude that the WHOLE of the geologic history that we can uncover
reflects a world that had gone astray, and therefore there was no reason anywhere along
the line to view that there should not have been some catastrophe--local or of wider range--
during this whole period.
The Devil may have gone so far with certin things, and he may have wanted to change
certain things, but then God also may have said 'Well look, I want a change. I want certain
new life forms to be produced. I will see what you will do with them.’ And so there is no
reason to discount what you see when you travel down the walls of the Grand Canyon.
One period after another that cannot be accounted for by anything we know of except for
major periods of time - major only as (we) comprehend time. Now presumably not more
than a third of the angels followed the Devil. The other two thirds profited by the experience
and took no part in the spirit of competition as developed in the biological world...
It does take some time for some people to poison other peoples minds and it takes time, as
Mr Armstrong said, for the Devil to pursuade angels, who were greater in knowledge by far
than human beings. And the Devil was going back and forth, and he kept arguing with God
over the necessity of the creation being patterned after a different philosophy than God's.
But God never listened, and the Devil always came back and told the angels that ‘God
never listened’, just as ‘Mr Armstrong never listened’--you've heard that. Well God never
listened to the Devil either...
Apparently all this time God allowed the Devil the chance to see whether after he had
examined the nature that he was governing (or abusing--whatever term you want to use),
whether he would change or whether he would not. They finally came to the point, as Mr
Armstrong said, where spirits apparently do set their character, and you can go only so far
in the realm of spirit until your attitude so poisons you that it can never be altered”.....
When Australopithecines appear in Africa (they have not been discovered elsewhere) "late"
in the history of the world we have a creature that can make tools, but not according to a
pre-conceived pattern. An outline of develcpment follows. First, we have a creature who
looked somewhat like apes, who tended to walk somewhat upright, who made tools, but not
enter a pre-conceived pattern--the form of the tool is after the natural characteristics of the
rock.
2
Then we have a creature who walked upright called "Homo Erectus". He had the capacity
to make a tool from a pre-conceived pattern, but did not have modern man's brain capacity
so he was not classified as ‘Homo Sapiens’ because he did not think and reason as man
reasons. At this level (of Java Man and Peking Man) the term ‘homo’ may be misleading
because it is not ‘man’ as a son of Adam. It would be better to correct this misconception of
modern evolutionary science to conform to the truth of the world we see. There was no
developmental progress or advances in culture of these creatures though they existed for
maybe hundreds of thousands of years. If you examine geology with radiometric dating you
will have to conclude that there were steps in creation, with the presence of new forms of
life at each step which continue for a very long time without variation (evolution).
Now after Homo Erectus we come to....Neanderthal Man, where ‘man’ is again a misnomer.
He made tools, a bed, a shelter--but so can other animals. He could make rather involved
tools, but had no sense of art. Man is an artistic creature, but this doesn't mean all artistic
creatures are men. But no art is ever associated with Homo Neanderthalensis. And there is
also the question whether he could speak or just made sounds with his voice. Then 35 to
40 thousand years ago angels had the responsibility of governing a world that changed
from creatures lead primarily by instinct to creatures less and less so. There is thus the
indication that angels were being trained not just to utilise the natural world of plants and
animals and to supervise the climate and all other aspects of nature, but to train creatures
who had the capacity to begin to fashion something out of the nature in which they lived,
and in more and more complex form....To our knowledge, ‘apemen’ do not now exist on
earth though there are reports of ‘big-foot’ and the ‘abominable snowman’....
After Homo Neanderthalensis we come to Cro-Magnon, or Upper Paleolithic "man", who
once again should not be called ‘man’ but it would be better to use a term like ‘hominid’ for
him. At the close of the Ice Age or Arctic Climate this creature could make tools and houses
and could communicate better than any former creature. He could draw--perform aesthetic
operations. He could hunt, fish, and make weapons to find his food. Upper Paleolithic
hominids are therefore unusual in that they have gone beyond former creatures in many
keys such as art and an aesthetic sense, and in the capacity to communicate ideas. For 20
to 25 thousand years they lived on earth and hunted and fished--but they knew no
agriculture, they domesticated no animals, they neither sowed nor reaped the fields. While
they were here these ideas never penetrated their minds or brains, though they had the
other advancements.
In the Bible, Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden and told to ‘dress and keep it’.
Adam is therefore of sufficient mentality to be a gardener and able to perceive the
fundamentals of agriculture. He could also reason about such things as eternal life and
death. Adam's older son Cain built a town and was an agriculturalist and tilled the field or
used the plough. Adam's second son Abel kept sheep, and therefore may have kept other
domestic animals--at least he was advanced enough of an agriculturalist to tend
domesticated stock.
Man has not been on earth more than 6000 years according to the Bible. He starts out
capable of thinking of eternal matters, as well as the fundamentals of agriculture and town
building. In Isaiah we are told that certain things were engraved with ‘the pen of Enoch’ or
"the stylus of a man". There the implication of the Hebrew text is that Enoch, the son of
Seth, invented the art of writing, because it was named after him. In Genesis we find ‘the
book of the Generations of Adam’ which implies that in the lifetimes of Seth and Enoch,
men had the capacity not only to write, but to convey, preserve, and perpetuate the written
word, not necessarily in scroll or codex form.
3
We should have realized that Homo Erectus did not write, paint, or farm. Likewise Homo
Neanderthalensis, Upper Paleolithic hominids (Cro-Magnon) etc. though they did paint and
draw, did not domesticate animals, nor sow and reap, nor build cities, but only preyed on
the environment like other animals. Modern man is just a refined and reduced Cro-Magnon
man....Angels had been given responsibility to rule creatures who could clothe themselves
with skins to keep warm in the cold, but could not think out agriculture. they were being
introduced to gradually, more and more complex forms of life.
After Cro-Magnon we come to ‘Mesolithic man’...Mesolithic man is even more refined than
Cro-Magnon. He used tools different from his predecessors, who used just stone. He used
bone and wood and jewelry. He also reaped wild grains, though he did not sow, and he
domesticated a few animals, but did not yet have pottery. He did live in groups, or tribes, or
clans--whatever term we might like to apply from our perspective. Later we have
development of the use of clay. There was just about 4000 years from the beginning of
gathering (like berries, nuts, and wild grains) to the conclusion of the Pottery Neolithic
period.
This was 4000 years in which hominids made the most rudimentary developments, slowly
but surely. Angels were given charge for the first time over creatures that could think out
new techniques of domestication, step by step the gradual making of pottery, the invention
of a king of village or community--only this in 4000 years from about 8000 to 4000 B.C. do
these stages occur. Compare this with the progress from Adam to Herod the Great.
Humans in only 1700 years progressed to the point where God said "nothing shall be
restrained from man that he has imagined to do". In the last pre-Adamic phase the
hominids lived with little instinct and at a level not unlike the most primitive men live today.
Apparently, they were not accountable to sin because God did not reveal certain things to
them. Though they could not be distinguished skeletally from modern man, they obviously
did not have the ‘spirit in man’ which gives him the capability to reach the moon in 6000
years of progress. Something was yet missing though they had incipient agriculture and
village life.
Even if the angels had not rebelled, presumably the next step would have been the
impartation of spirit in man--to create out of matter a form of life which the angels might
originally have ruled over. Mr Armstrong has said that God must have always had in mind
the possibility of an alternative. If angels would not do what God wanted done, then He
would create creatures capable of doing it. And if spirit beings, the angels, would not do it
and be obedient, then He would put His Spirit in matter and test that before it is made spirit.
Some one-third of the angels very early on decided to 'do their own thing’ and rebelled.
Two-thirds apparently remained faithful to God. Following Satan, the disobedient angels
abandoned this world as their inheritance. While on earth for a very long period of time,
they introduced into nature a world subject to tragedies. But Romans 8 tells of a time when
the sons of God in God's government will regulate nature in an entirely different fashion.
‘The creation will also be delivered from the bondage of corruption to the glorious liberty of
the children of God. The whole creation (not just man) groans and travails together in pain
till now.’ Mr Armstrong said this is a reflection of the mind (or brain from another point of
view of the Devil. What we are looking for is the "manifestation of the sons of God’.
In this we will not have a world that devours itself. Today there is no fish, plant or bird that
is not subject to the ‘law’ that reflects the mind of the Devil. We live in the same kind of
world as the whole of geologic histrory. As far as our knowledge goes, the whole of the
4
history of creation revealed in history shows that same suffering that Romans 8 speaks of,
which is unlike the peaceful World Tomorrow.
The laws of reproduction have been woven together with the laws of food consumption so
that it reflects the Devil's way of how he thinks nature should be controlled. Now if this were
the way God intended it, then the description of the Millennium given by Isaiah would be
wrong. But the evidence of geology indicates the Devil was already ‘doing his thing’. When
he appeared before God, He didn't listen to him because God said it was wrong but God let
Him go ahead. Then the Devil went back and argued and reasoned with the angels until a
third of them agreed with him that ‘God doesn't listen’.
The final act of rebellion was a crisis in which the Devil and the angels perceived that the
next step God had in mind was to terminate their experiment--I see no alternative-to
intervene and create a creature like the hominids but one step higher, with the capacity to
reason like the mind of God - higher than the creatures with a ‘brutish mentality’ that is not
accountable for sin, but one that has capacity to govern himself and decide for himself
apart from any instinct which way he shall go. When the angels perceived that this was
likely the case, they decided to abandon this inheritance, to scale the heavens, and
dethrone God so they could set up the universe with a nature in accordance with their
ideas of competition and strife and keeping in balance by dividing and conquering and
devouring--the ‘philosophy’ of nature today. But they were cast down, held in restraint.
When God created Adam, in whom the ‘spirit in man’ was added he had the capacity to
reason and build without limit. Every former man-like creature had an upper limit beyond
which he could not progress. Suddenly a creature was created who had no upper limit to
his thinking in the natural world, no limit to his speculation. We can contemplate eternity
and be held accountable for law and sin. God tested Adam at this point and you know that
our first two parents failed the test in the Garden of Eden, and the world once again passed
to the realm of Satan, and human civilization instead of being developed under God's law
and nature under God's law--everything passed under a curse.
Notice in Genesis 3:14 addressed to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this you are
cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon your belly you shall go,
and you shall eat dust all the days of our life’. This can be symbolic, but it can also be
literal. The implication is that the curse was not only on the serpent through whom the Devil
spoke, but also on the cattle--one was cursed ‘above’ the other. The curse fell on all nature.
The creature that was at one time ‘more subtile than any beast of the field (Genesis 3:1)’
was reduced to crawling on the ground. (And there is the symbolism of the Devil himself
being cast to the earth in the past and the future.) Nature was cursed with the ‘philosophy"
of the Devil--this is the way he wants to run the world. God put man in this world to see
what it is like when run by the Devil's philosophy....
He said, ‘Cursed is the serpent ABOVE’' the rest of the beasts of the field’ with the
indication immediately that the rest of nature was cursed because in the Garden of Eden
we don't have this experience. Adam saw all these animals and there were no feelings in
the Garden of Eden that he had to be careful of the lion who was getting hungry at nightfall.
There was no fear that we sense in that account....Also He let a curse fall on man and
woman. The ground brought forth thorns and thistles, climatic problems, toil and sweat.
This is the world of the last 6000 years. Man is now responsible for making choices in that
world. God then called out a few patriarchs, prophets, apostles and us saints who will be
the firstfruits resurrected out of the earth, and assigned (with Christ) the responsibility to
5
restore the government of God on earth, a government which the angels failed to exercise
for millions of years.”
